TV News

One tyrant’s death is never good news for the stability for the state, and any drama about that, attracts some big names. Jeffrey Tambor, Steve Buscemi, Timothy Dalton, Olga Kurylenko, Toby Kebbel, Simon Russell Beale, Paddy Considine, and Andrea Riseborough are all set to join the cast of Armando Iannucci’s political satire The Death of Stalin, the follow up to his HBO comedy Veep.

The drama will centre on the aftermath of Stalin’s death in 1953, and the accompanying power vacuum and days of political infighting that followed. Steve Buscemi is set to play the dictator’s eventual successor Nikita Khrushchev, with Jeffrey Tambor playing Georgy Malenkov, chairman of the council of ministers in the wake of the leaders passing.

In this time of remilitarising Russia, it seems apt that we look to its past to contextualise the growing hostility of the country to the west.